Professor Timothy DoyleProfessor of Politics and International Studies, University of Adelaide, Australia Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow of Indian Ocean Futures, Curtin University, AustraliaEmeritus Professor of Politics and International Relations, Keele University, United KingdomChief Editor, Journal of the Indian Ocean Region (Routledge, London)

AbstractDictated and driven to a significant extent by the changing dynamics of knowledge-power equations, regional constructions are devised and propagated for a range of purposes - describing economic success, structuring a set of relationships, reproducing a particular vision of (in) security, or organising a specific function, such as to maximise economic cooperation, to minimise insecurity or to fashion a particular form of security architecture. It is argued that there are three competing regional constructions for security (currently in circulation) in the Indian Ocean Region: an Indian Ocean-wide concept, an East Indian Ocean construct and an Indo-Pacific concept. Depending on which construction is selected and adhered to, the place of Australia in the ‘new’ geopolitics and geoeconomics of the current world order is similarly hotly contested. In this paper’s conclusions, it is suggested that there exists an overriding narrative in favour of an ‘Indo-Pacific’ construction at the expense of certain Indian Ocean concepts.This research is part of a much larger project entitled ‘Building an Indian Ocean Region’ DP 120101066, which is funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Projects Scheme 2012 – 2017.

About Professor Timothy DoyleProfessor Timothy Doyle, Adelaide, Curtin and Keele Universities, has taught and contributed to university courses in the United Kingdom, the United States, Malaysia, India and Australia. He is Vice-Chair of the Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG) based in Chandigarh and Perth, which has official Observer status in IORA. He is founding Chair the Indo-Pacific Governance Research Centre (IPGRC) based at University of Adelaide; and he served as founding Head of the Research Centre for Politics, International Relations and Environment (RC4SPIRE) at Keele University in the UK. Currently, he is Immediate-Past-Chair of the Indian Ocean Rim Academic Group (IORAG) based in Ebene, Mauritius, and has been appointed as a Distinguished Research Fellow in the Australia-Asia-Pacific Institute (AAPI) at Curtin University. Currently he also serves as the Department and Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Focal Point for the Indian Ocean Rim. He is Editor-in-Chief of the new international Journal of the Indian Ocean Region (Routledge: London and New Delhi); and serves on the editorial boards of the international journals Social Movement Studies (Routledge: London); and Global Faultlines (Pluto Press, London). He is series editor of Environment and Society titles in the Routledge Introductions to Environment Series. He is series editor, with Phil Catney, of the Transforming Environmental Politics and Policy series, Routledge, London. He has been a dedicated environmental and human rights activist since the 1980s, publishing over a dozen books in the areas of Indian Ocean Studies, global political economy, politics and international relations of the environment, social and political movements, and political fiction. Read Timothy Doyle’s profile HERE